The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy

COLLOQUY

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Computer technology is first of all like a magnifying mirror. Is its introduction better? Better against what? There is ample evidence of national discomfort with the quality of the K-16 system where at each exit point persons are graduating with full certification but lack of competence. The rise of alternatives to the traditional institutions is telling (technology not withstanding). One might look at Bill Reading's "The University in Ruins" as one paradigmatic example.

Next, computers/technology change the nature of the game. We cannot measure competence for a past that never was to build a future that never will be. You cannot map a changing paradigm onto a static model.

What is being questioned is not the computers, but the current metaphor. To set up the strawman in the form of computers/technology in this debate is a clever misdirection.

Carlos Fuentes has said, "remember the future, imagine the past."

-- Tom Abeles, resident futurist, Sagacity, Inc. (posted 1/15, 9:45 a.m., E.S.T.)
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